(Photo: Russian Embassy, Havana, Cuba; by Lorne Bridgman)

By Christopher Frey

Journal: Havana, Sept 14, 2009
Photographer Lorne Bridgman and I tool around Miramar, where the Spanish colonial, art nouveau and deco mansions of Havana’s pre-revolutionary rich have been given over to embassies and company headquarters. The most conspicuous foreign mission is the former U.S.S.R./now Russian embajada, which we get out of the car to gawk at. It seems to glower rather direly back at us. Some Cubans say it resembles a syringe—as in ‘the syringe used by the Russians to inject communism in Cuba!’ (Seriously, I’ve read that in several places.) But ‘monstrosity’ is the word I’ve seen most often used to describe the thirty-three story structure, whether by locals or foreigners.

I happen to enjoy the sight of it, but I have an unhealthy fascination with totalitarian architecture and design. Sure, the obelisk erupting from a brutalist tower block does suggest a periscope from which those inside might be surveilling the city—a menacing cyclopean eye on Havana. But its face has the kind of enigmatic expression one sees in primitivist stone statuary, like a Polynesian moai. I also find myself thinking how the building’s form mimics the distorted proportions and elongations of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures of the human body. Those descriptions still make the building sound pretty creepy, and that’s probably not the best tone for an embassy’s architecture to convey. But in and of itself the building is compelling.

We only manage to squeeze in a few photographs of the building before security guards from other embassies in the area whistle and shoo us away. Lorne protests, “They build an architecturally provocative building and don’t expect people to want to take pictures of it?”

(Los Carpinteros, Embajada Rusa)

The work of local artist collective Los Carpinteros takes its cues from Havana’s built environment, and has produced a series of wooden sculptures that playfully reconfigure the city’s most iconic, landmark buildings. In 2003 they produced Embajada Rusa, a finely crafted cedar chest of drawers that replicates the Russian embassy. The tiny drawers like filing cabinets crammed with secret memos on all those potentially troublesome Habaneros.